Chávez's War of Words

[Woodmonkey]

Chávez's War of Words

Last week Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a news conference at which he launched into a vitriolic denunciation of Israel, "the usurper Zionist regime," for its bombing of civilians in Lebanon. For a politician who has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and called for Israel's extinction, it was pretty routine stuff.

Then the visiting head of state standing next to Ahmadinejad piped up. "Do they want war because they have the devil inside them?" demanded Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, speaking of the Jewish state. "I say to them from here, from Iran, once and a thousand times: Murderers! Cowards! Frankly, their fate has been sealed, from the depths of the people's soul."

No wonder Ahmadinejad had just described Chávez as a "brother and trench mate." But the Venezuelan wasn't finished. Israel's acts, he said, reminded him of a time when Simon Bolivar had invoked the story of Cain and Abel to talk about an enemy. "Bolivar said that day: 'God, if you have justice, throw a lightning bolt at the monsters,' " Chávez pronounced. "I would say today: 'God, throw the lightning bolts at the monsters.' Inshallah ."

According to BBC Monitoring, Chávez won a round of applause from his Iranian friends. Curiously, though, his tirade got almost no attention outside Tehran. In a week during which a movie star was pilloried for a somewhat milder anti-Semitic outburst (and Mel Gibson at least could say he was drunk), no one seemed to care about the hate speech of the president of a large South American country and one of the world's biggest oil exporters -- a man who has been conducting a frenetic campaign to win his government a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council.

In fact, Chávez's performance was in keeping with the character of an eight-nation tour that took him from Argentina to Benin. But Israel was not his main concern. At each stop, the self-styled "Bolivarian revolutionary" delivered superheated denunciations of the United States and called for a global coalition to combat "the U.S. imperialist monster."

In Minsk, where he met Belarusan President Alexander Lukashenko, commonly known as "Europe's last dictator," Chávez said the United States is "a senseless, blind, stupid giant that understands nothing about human rights, humaneness, culture, consciousness and awareness."

In Moscow, where he signed a contract for a $1 billion purchase of advanced SU-30 fighter planes, raising Venezuela's arms buys from Russia to $3 billion in the past 18 months, Chávez said that "the biggest threat in the world is the U.S. empire." In Hanoi he discoursed at length on the "pre-animal" depredations of the U.S. military, including the bombing of Japanese cities in World War II. Then he praised the Vietnamese for their defeat of "the monster," while warning it "will never give up its plot to stop and undermine us."

Chávez's next-to-last stop was the poor African country of Mali, where "imperialism" usually means France, the country's former colonial master. Never mind: "We must unite, we countries of the South, against the hegemony of the United States," proclaimed the unlikely visitor to Bamako. "Or we will all die."

What to make of all this? One easy explanation is that Chávez has come unhinged, and his hatred of the United States -- not to mention Jews -- is pathological. But I find another theory more persuasive: Chávez is betting that resentment and anger toward the United States has become so entrenched around the world that by becoming its champion he can make himself a global leader. First, in his reckoning, Venezuela will brush aside Russia and France to lead the opposition to U.S. initiatives at the United Nations. Then, who knows?

This offers an interesting test of just how far other countries are now willing to go in challenging the U.S. global role. The answer is: not too far, if Chávez is the alternative. In Argentina, South American governments swiftly rejected his suggestion of a joint military force. In Belarus, he got a bear hug from Lukashenko, a diplomatic pariah; but Vietnam's top leaders, who are hoping to host President Bush in November, appeared embarrassed by Chávez's rhetoric, which they pointedly did not second.

In Moscow, Chávez's attempt to score a hug was icily evaded by Vladimir Putin, who, as the Russian newspaper Kommersant sarcastically described it, literally held the Venezuelan at arm's length. Having pocketed Chávez's cash and listened to his rant, Putin responded with a single sentence: "The cooperation between Russia and Venezuela isn't aimed against anyone."

It remains to be seen whether Chávez will get his Security Council seat in a vote by the General Assembly in October; thanks to some inept diplomacy by the Bush administration, he just might. But Bush at least managed to win last week's war of words. Asked by a Fox television interviewer if Chávez posed a threat to the United States, Bush responded with the cruelest cut possible for the Bolivarian: "No, I don't view him as a threat."

Neither, it seems, does anyone else.

The Source

[Caldric]

Chavez who?

A small man who thinks he is someone.

[kepiblanc]

he Is A Small Man With A Great Amount Of Petrodolars Trying To Polarize Sudamerica.is A Very Dangerous Man Buying Support Of Corrupt Presidents.he Scares To Me,is A Mixture Between Castro And Peron.dangerous.

[Woodmonkey]

Originally Posted by kepiblanc

he Is A Small Man With A Great Amount Of Petrodolars Trying To Polarize Sudamerica.is A Very Dangerous Man Buying Support Of Corrupt Presidents.he Scares To Me,is A Mixture Between Castro And Peron.dangerous.

Thank you, Guille, for responding. This man has concerned me for a while now. Milmor_1 got me to thinking with his post about how our obsession with the Middle East and Islam is diverting us from other, very real dangers. This man is one of the ones who isn't watched as closely as he should be.

[milmor_1]

Unfortunately what we may be dealing with shortly is an Oil war.

At the end of this month the UN has threatened sanctions against Iran if they dont comply with UN resolutions with regards to their nucler programme.

Iran has in turn said they may turn of the oil taps.

Chavez has sided with Iran, watch what happens to Venzualen oil over the next few weeks.

BP has shut down the Alaskan fields.

Will we be facing more terrorist attacks on the nigerian oil fields.

This all seems so connected.

Chavez and his ilk may have us over the proverbial barrel shortly.

Little man+big oil reserves = Big stick

[milmor_1]

Found this news article on the net today about Nigerian Oil workers, the last paragraph about terrorist attacks is quite telling.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/14082006/34...d-nigeria.html

UK oil worker kidnapped in Nigeria Monday August 14, 12:37 PM

A British oil worker is among four people who were abducted from a nightclub in Nigeria at the weekend, local police said.

The hostages were kidnapped from the Goodfellas club in Port Harcourt on Sunday night as gun battles broke out throughout the southern city.

Nigerian state police confirmed on Monday that four people had been taken captive, including a Briton and an American working for oil contractors.

The kidnappers have not been named and no arrests have been made, police spokeswoman Irejua Barasua said.

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokeswoman said: "We are aware of the reports and are urgently looking into them."

George Ani, a driver in Port Harcourt, said he saw more than 10 people go into the Goodfellas club and drag away a group of foreigners.

He went on: "They were shooting and everyone started screaming. They took some expatriates but I don't know how many. I lay on the floor of my car until it was finished."

Mr Ani said the nightclub attackers were wearing military uniforms and did not cover their faces. He did not see anyone injured in the raid.

Foreign workers in Nigeria have had their movements severely restricted following a series of abductions in the country's oil-rich south-eastern delta over the last week.

Nigeria is Africa's largest crude oil producer, typically generating about 2.6 million barrels a day. But militant attacks have cut production by more than 20% since the start of the year.